Hils's journal

Fandom meme from naye!

Name: Hils

Fandoms: Guardian, The Untamed and The Lost Tomb are my main three at the moment

Where you post: My fic goes on AO3, I ramble on Twitter and reblog insights more intelligent than anything I could come up with on Tumblr. I tend to cross-post or link to my fics on Twitter and Tumblr on days when I'm not feeling overwhelmed with anxiety at the prospect of being Seen.

Most popular multi-chapter fic: God, I barely ever write multi-chapter fics. Even my longest ones I posted as one-shots. I think the only multi-chaptered fic I've posted is He's My Brother because it made sense with the different character POV switches.

Favorite story you’ve written so far: I think it's probably And There's That Pesky Thing Called Reality. I was really fun to get into the meta side of fandom and it's one of the longest things I've written

Fic you were nervous to post: Hahah! I get nervous every time I post a fic.

How you choose your titles: Sometimes it's a phrase or theme that stands out in the story, sometimes I go the tried and tested method of song lyrics

Do you outline: YES! The level of detail depends on how long I think the fic will be. If it's something short I might just jot down notes for a scene or line I have in my head to make sure I remember to include it. If it's going to be a longer fic I will write a full outline just so I know where I'm going next with it. Sometimes I deviate from the outline or the fic ends up going in a slightly different direction but I find it helpful to have notes anyway.

Complete: 204 on AO3 but there may be random other things that I never migrated over from Livejournal

In progress: One Guardian fic, one Untamed fic, and my sundial_exchange fic

Coming soon/not yet started: I have outlines for a couple more Guardian fics that I want to write for hc_bingo even though I'm going to miss the deadline to complete my card. I still want to write them.

Do you accept prompts: Absolutely! I can't promise I'll ever write them but sometimes a prompt is just what I need to kick myself into writing something

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: I'm actually really excited to finish my latest Guardian WIP. Unfortunately it's had to go on hold until I finish my sundial_exchange fic but I can't wait to get back to it

Tagging: God I am so bad at tagging. I mean I can always cover the basics but I can never think of anything else.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and Happy Friday to those who don't.

It's been a weird but not entirely unpleasant couple of days.

Christmas Eve was actually really nice. I had a lovely lie in, then spent a couple of hours sprawled on the sofa doing the Christmas event in Animal Crossing. I had to dress up as Santa and deliver presents to all the villagers on my island. It was nice.

I was mulling over what to do with my afternoon when I spotted a tweet from one of my Twitter mutuals saying she'd got a mean comment on one of her fics and it had made her sad. Inspiration struck. I am really bad at remembering to leave comments and kudos on fics, because I tend to read anything longer than about 10k on my Kindle.

So I decided to give the gift of comments on Christmas Eve. I went through a bunch of fics I've recced and left kudos and comments on them all. It felt good, and I didn't get close to doing them all so I think I shall carry on whenever I have some time.

After that I cooked some dinner. Hilariously it's been a tradition that mum always does a fry-up on Christmas Eve. I can't remember when or how it started but it's been a thing for a while. I decided that even though I was on my own I was going to keep the tradition going. What makes it funny is that after I'd cooked everything I sent a photo to the family Facebook chat and I was literally the only one who had done it. My parents had decided to have fish and chips and my sister and her boyfriend were having ham. Oh well, I enjoyed it.

While I was cooking dinner solo messaged me to see if I was around and wanted to watch something. We ended up having an impromptu Zoom party with the two of us and a few people from my group chat where we watched a couple of episodes of The Untamed and chatted. It was really nice.

Afterwards TheBonWitch and I played Animal Crossing together and visited each other so we could look at all the Christmas decorations and trade items. It was fun. We voice chatted on Discord while we were playing so it was almost like we were together.

When amedawg18 got back from her virtual church service the three of us watched an episode of The Mystic Nine together. Because what is more festive than tomb raiding silliness?

By the time we got done with that it was almost midnight and Bon told me I had to go to bed or Santa wouldn't come :D I read some more of a fantastic Guardian fic I'm halfway through and then it was time for sleep.

Today has been a pretty chill affair. Had a bit of a lie in, showered, opened my Christmas presents, had a nice video chat with my parents. A few days ago mum was suggesting I visit in May for dad's birthday but chatting to them today they've accepted it's probably more likely to be late summer/early autumn before I can visit them safely. We had a nice chat though and no one cried so I'm calling it a win.

Cooked myself a turkey dinner, ate it while I watched some Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (which I can now watch on the big tv thanks to my shiny new Amazon Fire stick).

Now I'm in the process of installing everything I need on my new laptop.

Not much else planned for today. Tomorrow Bon, Amy and I are going finish The Mystic Nine and probably watch some other silliness depending on who is around and what they feel like watching.

Sunday I have to get up early because NCT are doing a virtual concert at 6am my time. I am very smugly enjoying the fact that two of my irl friends have bought tickets after I shared my k-pop playlist with them. We'll probably chat on Zoom while we watch. It should be fun.

Jacqui is back on Sunday so she can help me eat the mountains of food I've bought.

Monday I have a Zoom call with the Newcastle gang in the evening and we're planning on having a go at playing Among Us which none of us has played before. Sheould be fun.

And then it's back to work on Tuesday.

It's amazing how fast time off goes.

But, as you can see, I've had social stuff going on for all of my days off so I might be alone but I'm definitely not lonely. I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends and family.

That's me finished work until next Tuesday.

It's a very weird time. I've sort of settled into the fact that I'm going to be alone for the next 5 days and I'm trying to turn it into something positive. I can sit on the couch and binge shows, play video games, eat whatever I want whenever I want, blast k-pop in the living room.

Then random little things will hit me. Like opening presents. Usually my dad will act as Santa and distribute the presents under the tree and making sure everyone gets something before doing the next batch. This year obviously it's just me and that's going to be weird.

This is the first time in my entire life I haven't spent Christmas with my parents. It just feels weird.

I have very much over compensated with the amount of food I've bought. There is way more than I can possibly eat. Even when Jacqui gets back on Sunday there is still way too much food. I just got carried away buying all the stuff my parents usually have at Christmas, not taking into account there's only me :D

We got a Christmas bonus from work and I used that, plus some of the money from the refunded beach apartment, to get myself a new laptop. I've been thinking about it for a while. The one I've got at the moment has been great. I got it free from work because they were going to throw it away when all it needed was a new hard drive and a charger. I've had it for about 5 years and it's started taking forever to boot up, and the screen is a bit scratched (it was like that when I got it) so I figured now was the time. I found one that's got pretty much the same specs as this one. The screen is slightly smaller but it's got a better graphics card. I really only use it for writing and, these days, streaming stuff over Zoom so it should do me fine. It arrived yesterday so I've put it under the Christmas tree as a Christmas present to myself.

I really want to talk about my sundial_exchange fic but I'm writing such a rare pairing that anything I say will give it away. I'm having a lot of fun doing research for it and I have a pretty solid plot outline. I should be ready to start putting words on the page any time now. I'm not sure it's going to appeal to a lot of people but I hope my recipient will at least like it.

H: Do you prefer live action TV shows or animated TV shows?
Honestly I'll watch anything so long as it's good. It's been a while since I watched anything animated but I have season 3 of Castlevania to watch, seasons 2-5 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and the final season of Voltron (which I will probably never watch because I've heard nothing good about it).

( Master List of Responses )

F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
I think Buffy is still the longest I've been in a fandom. I was active in it for about six years.

( Master List of Responses )

E: Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what?
Well, there was the time lou_angel and I wrote a BBC Merlin/Charlie the Unicorn fusion which later turned into a whole series involving various beardy wizards from other franchises.

Apart from that not really :D

( Master List of Responses )

Had a message from the lady I'm renting the beach apartment from and she's confirmed I'm okay to stay there over Christmas. I'd pretty much resigned myself to it not happening so that was a lovely and unexpected surprise.

In fandom news yesterday I decided to write up an intro post to pin at the top of my DW but the fandom history section has become very long. I've just got to my time in the Supernatural fandom, which was such a weird and genuinely life changing time that it could probably be its own post. Even summarising is going to take some time.

It's quite fun reliving old memories though and it's clearly sunk in or brought stuff to the surface because last night I dreamt I ran into Misha Collins at a Christmas market and we were reminiscing about old times.

Hello new (or possibly old) friend!

I'm pretty new to the Guardian fandom. I only finished watching the show in July this year, but I've honestly been blown away by what a warm and friendly fandom this is. Please know that whatever you decide to create I know I will love it and I thank you for signing up and offering your time.

Here's a few ideas or general ramblings but honestly feel free to go in whatever direction speaks to you.

( Guardian )

( The Lost Tomb Reboot )

( Guardian RPF )

( DNW )

After saying I was fine to go away for Christmas I got a message from the person letting the apartment last night saying she's not sure if I'll be able to go now because where she's located is still in Tier 3 which means all holiday homes have to close.

I was not in a good headspace after getting this news. Since I can't visit any of my family for the holidays going away was literally the only thing I had to look forward to.

It's nobody's fault. I certainly can't blame the host for actually following the rules. But the prospect of spending Christmas in my house alone had me feeling utterly miserable.

I'm so lucky to have such amazing friends. As soon as I told people everyone rallied around and within a few minutes I had multiple offers from people who said they weren't doing much for Christmas and would be happy to hang out online with me and chat or watch shows. My sister messaged me to say I could form a Christmas bubble with her and her partner and stay with them if I wanted (which I would but I don't think it's a good idea. She's also in Tier 3 and my work means I can't isolate before/after visiting people which is the same reason I can't visit my parents).

But today things looked a little more promising. The host messaged me again to say she think they will be dropping down to Tier 2 in a couple of weeks as their number of cases is falling. She also didn't know that the rules were changing over the festive period so she said she would look into that too.

Now that I've slept on it, it is what it is. If I can't go away for the holidays I'll just have to make the best of it. I have 5 days off work regardless and if it comes to it I might just drive out somewhere for the day just so I'm out of the house. We'll see what happens.

And, on the plus side, I channeled my sad feelings into something positive and wrote 500 words of my next hc_bingo fic. I actually felt better afterwards.

So, you know, taking one day at a time.

I really need to get back into the habit of checking in more often. But hello I'm still here!

Not much to report in the real life side of things. I'm back on recruitment duty again as one of the people we hired back in September decided the job wasn't for her and resigned. Unfortunately because we've hired so many new people recently our recruiter is struggling to find people he hasn't already spoken to. The higher restrictions really means we're limited to people who live in York, and coupled with the fact it's coming up to Christmas I don't think many people are looking to change jobs. We'll see how it goes I guess.

It looks like I should be okay for my beachside apartment at Christmas. Am going to message the host I'm renting from just to double check. I'm very excited at the prospect of being able to go on beach walks, even though December is the worst time and the weather will almost certainly be crap. I shall take many layers and just hope it doesn't rain.

Parents have mailed me a box of Christmas treats and gifts, and we've made plans to Zoom on Christmas Day between opening gifts and eating lunch. It's shit, but we're making the best with what we have. Optimistically we're talking about me visiting in the summer but it's way too early to plan anything like that.

In fandom news I am now so deep into the depths of k-pop that I got up at 3:30am on Saturday so I could watch a ONEUS concert. Right up until it started I was regretting my life choices but it actually ended up being fantastic. They opened with my favourite song of theirs, they played silly games between sets and they showed a short film they had made in and around their dorm which was honestly amazing. I really hope they eventually post it on their social media channels because everyone deserves to see it.

I mentioned that since I've moved my workspace to downstairs I've started writing again. Yesterday I finished the Lost Tomb fic that I started weeks ago and today I posted it!

The Road Ahead by Hils
Words: 1974
Fandom: 盗墓笔记重启 | The Lost Tomb Reboot (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wang Pangzi & Wu Xie, Wu Xie & Zhang Qiling, Wang Pangzi & Wu Xie & Zhang Qiling
Characters: Wu Xie (DMBJ Series), Wang Pangzi, Zhang Qiling
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, Missing Scene, spoon feeding, showering together, Cuddling & Snuggling

Summary: Missing scene from 1x03. Wu Xie gets sick after being out in the rain. Pangzi and Xiaoge take care of him.

Posting in a new fandom is always kind of daunting, even when it's just something small like this. I'm probably going to take the rest of the week to just let my brain reset, then I need to dig out my notebook where I plotted out the other fics I want to write for hc_bingo. I think the rest of them are all Guardian ideas :D

And speaking of fic I have also signed up for sundial_exchange. I can't even remember the last time I did any sort of gift exchange. Hopefully it'll be fun.

And since we're now in December and it's the time of year for kindness and love I've tossed my name onto the Holiday Love Meme. You can find my thread below, and I'm going to go through it probably tomorrow and look for people I know to shower them with love.

holiday love meme 2020
my thread here